Indonesia has long been known to have a wealth of tradition and culture. One of the most valuable is local knowledge to build houses. Variety of residential architecture in the archipelago is a significant source of knowledge for better life today. In context of today’s life, some issues and problem about the built environment are caused by human beings have forgotten their origins to build a home. For traditional societies, build homes were not limited to the physical building per se, but the meaning is far in, the relationship with the natural environment. Currently, ones of the traditions of living, which is genuine marked by nomad living and communal, have been seen in the Dayak Bukit tribes, who live in Meratus region in South Kalimantan Province. Studying the authenticity of the tradition and houses of Dayak Bukit is very important for the architecture, as an effort to understand the essence of living and build settlements in harmony with the natural environment. For it reason, this paper aims to explore the origins of the tradition of living and houses to understand the creative connectivity between the culture and the architecture. This study uses ethnography method. In-depth interview and field observation has used as main tactics. From the analysis, it has known that the tradition of living and houses has derived from the cultural-cultivation of rice. To do the duty of the cultural-cultivation of rice in the beginning of the process of farming, people have built up a lampau (open huts) on the farm as a place to rest during the clearing process. Subsequently, lampau has developed into a pondok (hut) when the plants should be treated until the harvest comes. During the maintenance, they stay in these huts until harvest time and will move to the location of the fresh fields to create a new past again. At the last, the pondok eventually evolved into a balai-adat (Dayak Bukit’s houses), which serves traditional as well as residential places for the ceremonial phases of farming. In spite of to the present day, the house has built to keep the essence of this pondok (hut), both in terms of function, space and form, notwithstanding the construction and materials. The tradition and adaptation that proved capable of giving a better life for this to make us have to learn from them. That is one of the real architecture of Indonesia. Keywords: vernacular architecture, balai-adat, Dayak Bukit tribes, huma-cultured, huma-tradition.